Kathmandu:

A fixture at the Hotel del’Annapurna, the Ghar-E-Kebab, is being worked over by Chef Ajay Pathak who is a part of a cabal of North Indian chefs who are taking the heaviness out of Indian food — so instead of eating it once a week you can eat it everyday.

Beginning his career as a part of the team that opened the famed Dum Pukht restaurant at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi, Ajay spread the word of Dum or steam cooking in Dubai and places East.

While Rudra Nath Rimal presided, Dinesh Raj Gautam served us food made tastier for its lightness like the Gosht ke mulayam kebab. It is chunks of lamb marinated with garlic and lemon juice spiced with royal cumin and mace and cooked first in an open dish and then finished in a tandoor. As you bite into the softness an ascending flavour of tastes gently assault you from the meat to the spices. According to writer Jiggs Kalra, the mulayam comes closest to the Tandoori boti kebab.

The Multani paneer tikka is thin slices of cottage cheese stuffed with mushrooms, spring onions and cheese and cooked in a tandoor. The spices assert themselves strongly.

Says the Chef, “What you are tasting is the garam or hot mixed spices common in Indian and tandoori cooking”. Of the Kadhai chicken, Kalra says, “Kadhai cooking originated with this ‘hot’ chicken delicacy cooked in tomatoes. The predominant flavour — fenugreek and

coriander.” Says Pathak, “I just use tomatoes, spring onions and capsicum and coriander are garnishes. So you get the pure taste of chicken, spring onions and crushed pepper.”

“For my mutton, I only use leg or shank so you get tenderness,” says Pathak as the Gosht saagwala was served. It is my favourite dish and food writers Piya Wickramasinghe and Carol Selva Rajah say, “This is a richly flavoured, traditional dish from the Northern part of Indian. It is cooked until the sauce is very thick”.

Chef Pathak has the spinach reduced with spices ranging from coriander seeds to peppercorns and bay leaves. Once eaten you order it again. The vegetable Shahjahani, which are seasonal vegetables with cumin seeds finished with Indian herbs and spices, comes closest to the Jalfaraizi — the old Anglo Indian dish. Foodie Jennifer Brennan says, “I fancy

there were times when the cook was homesick and paid less attention to dishes like this one, which was an excellent way to use up left-over meat.”

Chef Pathak’s vegetable Shahjahani has no meat and is delicious with its slight tomato gravy and the Kasoori fenugreek from Pakistan. But best of all are dishes that were invented 200 years ago in Lucknow during a famine when a Nawab created Dum Pukht to provide food-for-work for his subjects — like the Biryani which is described as, “Rice and lamb cooked together in a sealed container. You can cook the lamb without browning it first and in fact this is the traditional method”. The dish is finished with saffron in hot milk and it suffuses the dish. The aroma alone heightens the eating experience.

You end with a Kulfi or Indian ice-cream with nuts which used to be cooked by kulfi-wallahs in hundreds of tube-shaped terracotta containers, but which you can now make at home with reduced milk and nuts. Ghar-E-Kebab flavours followed us home. Each held a promise to bring us back. “I will be adding new dishes,” said Chef Pathak. We can’t wait. Call 4221711.